Sunday, April 1, 2012

My husband and I were driving around on Saturday running a random errand when we drove by a new restaurant that popped up by the mall near us. Actually, at first we weren't entirely sure what it was - it was a big shiny silver building that said Ginza.

We assumed it was a restaurant, but since we never read out local penny saver papers, we had no idea any new restaurants were opening in our town. So we drove around to the front, saw it was indeed a restaurant and that it was open. Naturally, I whipped out my phone and googled it and saw it has just opened the week prior and it was Japanese food.

We decided it would be our "last" meal out before the kiddo arrives. The baby is already over-due so we have an end date where he will be forcefully evicted so we pretty much figured we would be okay going out Sunday night since this kid has made no effort to remove himself from my body yet. And we were right.

I'm glad he stayed in though - this place was DELICIOUS! We had looked at the menu online on Saturday (www.ginzali.com) and while it was 85% sushi (which we don't eat) there were enough appetizers and kitchen entrees that we would have been fine.

So, we splurged for our last night out. My husband got the roasted butternut squash soup to start, and I got the chicken salad. Both were delicious, but the salad was a typical salad... the soup however, was AMAZING. We were a little hesitant because it is infused with coconut curry and young soy beans (edamame), but you couldn't detect the coconut curry at all. We polished off the soup (it was large enough for us to share) and ate some of my salad, but opted to take that home instead.

We also had sweet potato tempura and beef negimaki for other appetizers. The beef negimaki (beef scallion roll with teriyaki sauce) was seriously amazing. It was a strip of beef wrapped around scallions and it was so tender that it just melted in your mouth. The sweet potato tempura was delicious as well, but the beef was the top winner in this set of appetizers!!

Lastly, we ordered a teriyaki combo platter for us to share. We got chicken and steak which came with some vegetables as well. While it is hard to "mess up" teriyaki, theirs was done very well and the teriyaki sauce was not overly salty and just very, very good. We were very satisfied with everything we ate, so we DEFINITELY want to go back!

Plus, as a nice surprise, they are doing 15% off all "grand opening" on all dine in and take out orders. I am sure that was advertised somewhere, but we didn't know so we were excited. We're already wondering when we can get back there, but with the little guy arriving in just a few days, we'll probably just be taking in from there instead. Which is fine, but we will lose the ambiance of the restaurant (which is gorgeous, BTW. We felt like we were in a Las Vegas establishment instead of on Long Island).

All in all, we were very happy with our choice for a last meal out before the kiddo. And, we will definitely be going back for a long time to come, so I hope they do well!